1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates gowns and like coverings for use by a medical patient in a doctor's office or hospital setting as a patient covering that is easily opened to provide access to a medical person.
2. Prior Art
Currently patient gowns as are given to a patient to wear during a medical exam or in a hospital have essentially ignored the considerations of a patient's modesty and its ease of donning in favor of ease of access to the patient's body. Where, heretofore, a patient's mental state and comfort in the wear of present patient gowns has been sacrificed, the invention both provides a garment that a patient is comfortable in, provides both warmth and a secure covering of the patient's body, is a garment that is easily put on and taken off, with the patient needing no assistance to "get it on right" and still provides a convenience of opening to medical personnel conducting an exam or medical procedure on the patient's body. Further, where earlier gowns have ignored gown appearance, the invention lends itself to manufacture from a variety of fabrics, patterns and prints, to provide a patient with a gown that has an attractive and pleasing appearance so as to maintain and even improve the patient's spirits and sense of well-being, while providing a garment that is both functional and cost-effective to produce.
Unlike the invention, earlier patient gowns have generally included ties that extend at spaced intervals from opposite edges of the gown material and has arm holes or sleeves formed there to receive a patient's arms fitted therethrough, allowing the garment to be worn backward or forward with the material to be pulled together and the ties tied together, in bows. Such tie coupling, of course, only pulls the fabric material opposite edges together and, with the ties spaced apart, an open gap is often left between which material edges, wherethrough the patient's body can be seen. The patient, to cover their body, must therefore hold the material edges together to close that inevitable gap or opening, making the experience of wearing the gown potentially very embarrassing. Where the justification for having a gown that cannot be fully closed to effectively cover the patient's body has been a medical need for ready access to such patient's body, in the present invention, this need for ready access is met without a sacrifice in patent modesty.